Please Be My Daddy

The city was congested with traffic.

I was homeless. I wondered if he was too.

I couldn't stop staring at him as he stood across the street. He smoked cigarette after cigarette, and so did I.

He was agonizingly beautiful. Painfully gorgeous. His beard, his tattoos. He had a dark backpack slung over one shoulder that almost resembled a guitar case from afar.

I prayed to him. I whispered under my breath.

"Please, please be my daddy." I'd follow him to the ends of the earth if only he'd let me. I imagined fighting life at his side, the streets, anything that might come our way.

I think he looked my way a couple of times, but he always looked back.

I wanted him desperately. I would have done anything to have him, anything to have the honor of following him.

I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes. I could not turn away from him, my grim dirty angel, my ragged lovely Messiah.

Please, I thought to myself. Please, please, be my daddy.

I could not describe the beauty of his face, even to myself. How he let his shoulders protect him against the wind. I ached to press myself into the dark, fragrant cave of his lanky body.

Then he took one last drag of his cigarette and let it ricochet onto the asphalt, and stepped onto the bus that had pulled up in front of him, and quietly disappeared.